Pfizer Test Group Is Moving to Singapore

June 07--Pfizer Inc.’s 20-person surveillance testing
group in Groton, part of the company’s Scientific Laboratory
Services team that tests products manufactured by contractors, will
be moving to Singapore sometime next year.

Pfizer confirmed the planned move in an email, saying it was a
cost-cutting measure. The company said three people in its
surveillance testing group will be retained in Groton to oversee
the program, and others may remain with Pfizer in other areas.

Twenty-four people will be employed at the Singapore site, so
the move is not part of a company downsizing, a spokesman said.

"The existing surveillance laboratories in Groton will continue
operations through late 2012 at which point a transition to testing
at the Singapore lab will be initiated," Pfizer spokesman Steven L.
Danehy said. "This change helps us to better align our quality
operations with business demand and generally strengthens the
company’s position as a global supplier."

Danehy said the surveillance testing group operates out of
Building 257 at the Groton campus. The group uses about 4,000
square feet, or 25 percent, of the building, he added.

"Contractor surveillance testing is performed to ensure that
products purchased by Pfizer or sold on our behalf meet
Pfizer’s quality standards," Danehy said. "The expectations
for high quality apply to both Pfizer’s manufacturing sites
and our suppliers’ sites."

Danehy said the decision to move Pfizer’s testing
facilities to Singapore was made based partly on the
company’s growing reliance on overseas contractors to
manufacture its products. Other factors included a desire to reduce
operating costs.

"By providing surveillance testing services in Singapore, Pfizer
can more closely support this important growth market and suppliers
in Asia, and align with the location of Pfizer Global
Supply’s external supply organization in Asia," he said.

Pfizer said the relocation of its surveillance testing group,
which currently is not replicated at any of its other worldwide
sites, will not result in Building 257 being vacated.

The Scientific Laboratory Services group of which the
surveillance testers are a part includes 70 people based in Groton
and about 130 others around the world, including at sites in
Kalamazoo, Mich.; Parsippany, N.J.; Collegeville, Penn., and
Sandwich, England.

Pfizer for decades had manufacturing facilities in Groton, but
closed that portion of its operations in 2007. Its local operations
have been on the decline for years, including the sale in 2010 to
Electric Boat of its former Pfizer Global Research &
Development headquarters in New London and the move of
drug-discovery operations to the Boston area over the past
year.

As scientists moved out of Groton, Pfizer has been advertising
several of its buildings off Eastern Point Road for sale or lease.
Some Pfizer employees in the neuroscience unit have already moved
from Groton to Cambridge, Mass., but the entire group will not be
assembled there until Aug. 1, the company said. Pfizer said its
Groton site currently houses about 3,700 company employees, just
shy of its goal announced last year of reducing its local workforce
to 3,500.